


Icarus

by ACR



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Statutory Rape, Substance Abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-05
Updated: 2017-02-05
Packaged: 2018-09-22 04:55:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9584486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ACR/pseuds/ACR
Summary: Healing is a privilege that Eliot wasn't granted before he got trapped in Fillory. Now, while he tries to find a way out of this god forsaken place, healing might be the only thing he can do.-Non-canon Eliot backstory, multiple POV Queliot, lots and lots of angst, lots of trigger warnings, eventual happy ending (maybe)





	

**Author's Note:**

> Note: I finished season 1 but haven't seen any season 2 and probably won't until it gets put on Netflix honestly. So consider this an AU if it conflicts with any season 2 stuff, because it will, because I can't see the future unfortunately.  
> TRIGGER WARNINGS for underage/statutory rape, repressed sexuality, substance abuse, mental illness, trauma.

Eliot had fucked girls before.

To say his adolescence was complex might have been an understatement. In the greatest social underbelly of a farming town, with the pressure of his religious family and his father a faith leader, it was easy to suppress his deeper urges. The first time he was turned on by men in tight spandex on the cover of a magazine, he was twelve. The first time his father told him gays were bound to hell, he was thirteen. And the first time he fucked a girl, he was fourteen.

Her name was Mary Ann, a seventeen year old neighbor and older sister of a boy in his class that Eliot actually had eyes for, not that he would have ever admitted it back then. Eliot was all awkward angles and sore bones, having shot to six feet tall in the span of merely months. He was a tower of pale skin and messy black curls and soft eyes, which gained him ridicule from his classmates, but caught the attention of Mary Ann for some god forsaken reason. Maybe the only reason was means and opportunity, as is usually the case with any seventeen year old who preys on someone three years younger than them, but she took interest none the less. She spoke to him in soft voices and battered him with blue eyes and blonde locks. She reminded him of her brother, Charles, also with fair hair and even bigger eyes, and this aroused him strangely. (That probably should have been his first sign.) This strange attraction mixed with Eliot's desperate need to prove his masculinity, led him to her basement on a bad Friday night, with sour strawberry wine in between them.

Her skin was soft. Every girl that he had experienced, he always remembered the soft skin. He also numbness and pain, and that he didn't really enjoy it, and she seemed to enjoy it even less. He recalled walking into his house, hair and clothes disheveled, the sour taste of her fat tongue and strawberry wine haunting his every movement. His father took one look at him, clapped him on the shoulder with a smile that seemed to always know everything, and told him he was proud of him.

Proud of him for losing his virginity at the ripe age of fourteen to a much older girl.

This combination of confusing things made Eliots high school experience unbearable. Now at this point, he had not only discovered a keen distaste for women's bodies, but discovered exactly how much of a bad experience could be covered up by the taste of alcohol. His parents, bless them, had their hands full of six smart kids all heading for college and church leadership and their own marital issues, and how much trouble could one boy in a small town get into, really?

They had no idea.

During the day, Eliot attended school, with a few acquaintances and even less friends. His awkward stature, his intimidating intelligence, and his hidden sexuality that made him constantly feel demasculated, made him prime subject to being bullied by an array of people. His parents never asked, his siblings didn't care, and the teachers quietly ignored it.

At night, Eliot got wasted four evenings a week. He found a small niche of older, out of high school kids that took him under their wing, passing around bottles of vodka that they stole from their parents liquor cabinets, cigarettes they bought themselves, and occasionally cocaine they had scored in bigger cities that they could drive to in their shitty cars. They were the epitome of cool to Eliot, at first. In the hype of his hidden double life, he wasted away under the bottle, and had so much unprotected, numb sex with such a variety older girls, that he scraped by without contracting an STD by pure luck.

By sixteen, he was breaking, and holding himself together with what could only be described as sheer will power. It was easy to go to church, pretend his picturesque beautiful family ever even spoke to each other, pretend that his mother didn't abuse prescription pills and his dad wasn't cheating on her with a house wife or two. Easy to pretend that, despite now being the only child left living at home, his parents ever looked at him for longer than a few moments. Easy to get straight A's in high school despite the fact he was high in most of his classes, and skipped the rest without issue. Easy to ignore the abuse from bullies he still experienced.

And then it happened. People occasionally define their lives into sections, a before and after an event that changes them. Eliots life could be split into before, and after, he met Evan.

In a dark basement of one of his many nameless older friends, lines of coke on the table and marijuana smoke in the air, Eliot spotted Evan from across the room. Evan was dark caramel skin glowing in the bad lighting, long black hair falling into a braid over his shoulder, and brown eyes that caused Eliots voice to catch in his throat when they pierced him. His face flushed when this beautiful boy approached him. There, in a dark basement, with merlot on his tongue and bad music playing through the room, Eliot kissed a boy for the very first time. And it was like waking up from a bad dream.

After that, things seemed brighter. Eliot wanted to drink himself numb less, he tried harder at school, and he even tried talking to his parents more. And in all his free time, he spent it with Evan. Bonding, kissing, and eventually of course, fucking. Sex with men made sex with women look like a bad fever dream. It went like this for a few months. Then one day in the middle of summer, Evan held Eliots hand and broke up with him in the middle of their favorite book store, and disappeared almost as quickly as he had arrived.

Eliot would have rather been numb than feel the way he felt that day. He stumbled down the road, tears in his eyes, pain and anger flowing through him so freely. And with the bad luck and timing only Eliot could have, he heard his name being called, and looked up. One of the boys from school, one of the bullies, crossing the road to him with a sneer on his face. And Eliot, heart full of pain and face red with raw and embarrassing emotion, saw the bus coming. And he felt his bones lurching, compressing together, his vision blurring with rage.

And just like that, his life transitioned again. Before the use of telekinesis to murder a classmate who had tormented him for years, and after.

Eliot never finished high school, though he'd probably never admit it out loud now. He barely ever finished a thought after that. He grabbed what he could carry, and hitched a ride to the east coast, and decided to stop living a life that wasn't genuine to his desires. He never contacted his family again, changed his name, never heard what came of his bullies untimely death, and never fucked another girl unless there was also a guy involved. He lived the next few years of his life as a vagabond, never in one city for longer than 8 months before traveling on, working in bars and cafe's and finding intimacy and lovers and new addictions at every turn. He still repressed a lot of pain, a lot of emotions; but he felt more authentic to himself than he had otherwise ever been.

As for the telekinesis, he mostly ignored it. He occasionally broke a lamp mid-climax, or moved a wine glass during particularly hard fits of laughter, but those were easy to ignore or explain away. Once, after a lover had accused him of being a cold-hearted drug-addict, he had mentally destroyed his entire hotel room before skipping town again. He tried very hard to repress anger and pain, because those emotions caused the biggest flare ups of this power he was desperately trying to look away from.

It wasn't until he drunkenly stumbled out a shitty diner bathroom and into Brakebills, and aced the written test that he was given, that he was forced to look a little harder at what this all meant for him.

For the first time in the longest time he settled into one place. Magic did not come to him easily like most other schooling had. It challenged him every day to hone this incredibly volatile power, but that very challenge was what influenced him to stay. He had a place he belonged, a place that wanted him. He never really stopped drinking but it stopped becoming a necessary part of life. And when he met Margo, and the two formed a bond unlike any he had ever had before; a real, genuine friendship, he knew that this where he wanted to be too.

He had always suspected it was fate that led him to greeting Quentin Coldwater when he first came to Brakebills, and only later would he discover it really was a time traveling witch that set that up. And part of him truly liked Quentin, all shaggy hair and awkward cute smiles that intrigued Eliot immediately, that settled into a deep adoration when Quentin became this... Deeper, more interesting person, in a world of people who generally bored Eliot.

Another part of him fucking hated Quentin Coldwater.

Life was never really perfect for Eliot, but he thought he had left his past of murder and uncontrollable anger and trauma behind him. And these things seemed to follow Quentin around like a plague. Yet another split in Eliots life happened; before he killed his Beast-possessed boyfriend and afterwards. Suddenly he was sixteen again. Repressed memories, crippling depression, and mind numbing substance abuse ruled his life. Quentin and Margo and everyone else was on a backburner, and they knew it. Perhaps he never realized how good he was at pushing back his anger until he looked Margo in the eyes, and coldly rejected her offer to help him.

And maybe he could have figured it out. Maybe, given the chance, he would have snapped, destroyed a building or two, and then picked up the pieces and built himself again. Maybe he could have smiled again, reached mental stability again. Maybe he could have fallen in love again. Maybe he wouldn't have always been this broken. But healing is a privilege only those with time have, and it certainly wasn't a privilege that Eliot had now that he was trapped in Fillory in a marriage he didn't want for the rest of his god forsaken life.

Yes, Eliot had fucked girls before. 

And now, just like back then, he was fucking a girl just to forget the pain. But now he was also doing it to survive.


End file.
